I'm Surrounded By Freaks
by Shot in Sarajevo
Summary: Cordelia just can't seem to escape these crazy people. Even in England. BuffyHP crossover, crack!fic, one shot. Rated T for language


**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** Once again, crack fic! It's all I'm really good at writing. I drive myself crazy when I try to be too serious. Anyway, this takes place after the Season 1 finale of Buffy (so that would be in the summer, for all those keeping score at home), which also happens to be the summer of Book 7 in the HP universe. I actually started writing this only a month ago, which means maybe I'll actually start finishing fics before their first birthdays? Who knows. And as always, remember that it's crack for a reason!

**DISCLAIMER:** _Harry Potter_ is copyright to J. K. Rowling, and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ to Joss Whedon. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

* * *

Cordelia hated England. It was miserable—there was no sun, even in middle of July. How was she supposed to work on her tan when every single day was cloudy and overcast? 

_No wonder this country produces people like Giles_, she thought. _There's nothing to do here but read._

Not that Cordelia has resorted to reading yet. Instead she was spending great sums of her father's money in order to comfort herself. It was his idea to come to England on vacation anyway. He owed her.

But something else was still wrong. Even though she was buying more shoes than any reasonable person would ever need, it wasn't making her feel better. In fact, ever since they had landed at Heathrow, she had felt… well, depressed. And it wasn't just her; Cordelia noticed that everyone else in London seemed particularly glum.

It was probably the lack of sunshine, she reasoned to herself. How could anyone be happy when the mist settled sometime early in the morning and simply never went away?

"Whatever." Cordelia, standing alone in front of the mirror in her hotel bathroom, hadn't even realized she was speaking out loud.

"Only two more days in this dump, thank God."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Despite her glum predicament, Cordelia went into London that afternoon to do some more shopping. Stewing in her own thoughts was not making her feel better, and a new pair of shoes would definitely help keep her mind off subjects she would rather forget.

An hour later, it turned out only one pair of shoes was not enough, and she exited the fifth store on her list of stops weighed down with several heavy bags.

Suddenly, she heard an explosion behind her, followed by screams.

She turned around to see an unruly-looking woman, with a hideously wild mass of hair and the worst dark circles around her eyes that Cordelia had ever seen. Her black dress was _so_ 17th century. She was laughing maniacally, standing in the middle of the street next to a giant crater in the pavement, which Cordelia suspected she had created.

All around her, people were screaming and running and just generally being insane, and despite her first instinct to scream and flee with them, she suddenly decided to take a different approach. Maybe Buffy was rubbing off on her. Just a little. Just in respect to her gumption, not in terms of skin care regimes or anything. If the girl could _die_ and still fight vampires, she could handle a random mentally unhinged Brit with a pipe bomb, right?

With a sudden confidence she was previously unaware of, she set down her bags and strode towards the woman, who now doubled over in laughter.

"Hey!" Cordelia shouted, noticing a thin piece of wood the woman was holding, as if this person could've been any weirder. "HEY! I don't know what you meant by it, but people generally like their roads without humungous holes in them, so if you would explain what the hell that was about, I think everyone would appreciate it."

Cordelia wasn't sure what she meant by "everyone", because currently "everyone" was scurrying away as fast as there legs would carry them and didn't seem to want to stick around to listen to some insane chick explain why she had just blown up a busy London street.

Cordelia saw the woman cock her head. As a slow smile spread across the woman's face, she saw a beam of red light shoot out of the stick before her body crumpled to the floor.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

As Cordelia regained consciousness, she heard two female voices arguing in hushed whispers.

"What were you thinking, Bella? You cannot bring her here!" the first voice said, the irritation noticeable in her voice.

"Well, why not? She's a prisoner, and this is our headquarters. Where else should I have brought her?"

"This is not a hotel, Bella! I already have enough people staying here! Do you have any idea how much cooking I have to do? I never cooked a damn thing until the dratted house elf got himself freed, and now I have to make dinner for fifty people! I am not cooking for another prisoner."

Cordelia tried to move her hand, only to realize that both were tied down to a chair. She opened her eyes a crack, and saw that first voice belonged to a woman with long, blonde, well-kept hair, and the second to the freak that had blown up the street.

"You always do this, Bella. You never think of anything except what _you_ want. Why couldn't you have just killed her in the street? Or stunned her and left her there? My house is not a place to store your toys until you're ready to play with them!"

"Excuse me," Cordelia said in a small voice, figuring now was as good as a time as any to interrupt. "Where am I?"

"She's _American_?! You kidnapped an American?" the blonde woman yelled, her face turning pink.

"Oh please," the former mental patient tried to feign innocence, "I didn't know she was American!"

"Bollocks, you didn't know she was American! You said she yelled at you. How could you not know? Fucking Merlin, Bella, you know how the Americans get about these things! They start wars over kidnapped tourists! The American Wizarding Federation will be looking for her, and we're number one on their lists right now!"

"Oh please, Cissy, she's not even a witch! She was shopping with the rest of the dirty Muggles," the woman named Bella said.

"You think they care? You know them, they think they're above the Ministry, they think they're above everyone. If they think there's magic involved, they'll come looking."

"Excuse me!" Cordelia yelled. "Look, I'm no expert on this, but from what little experience I've had, I think it's kinda rude to ignore your prisoners." Cordelia was inwardly proud of herself for that comment. It felt like it was something Buffy would say.

"You're not gonna bite me, are you?" Cordelia added as an afterthought, after seeing a look of annoyance on the blonde and a look of pure malice on the crazy one.

Both women suddenly changed to looks of utter bewilderment.

"Why would we… bite you?" the blonde asked.

"Okay, so you're not vampires! It's an easy mistake to make, with the pale skin and 17th century clothes and all. Look, all I know about spotting vampires is what Ms. Calendar told me. Don't have a cow or anything."

The blonde shook her head and turned back to Bella.

"Look, just… I don't know, drop her somewhere in London so we can be done with this," the blonde rubbed her temples, as if that would actually get rid of the headache that she could feel forming around her frontal lobe.

"Can't I just kill her? Please Cissy?"

"Okay, that's enough! After surviving through spontaneously going blind, a bitter invisible chick using me to practice her plastic surgery skills, a Hell Mouth opening to release a some slimy monster with a whole lot of tentacles, _and_ a school full of freaks, I do not want to die at the hands of some psycho with frizzy hair and bags under her eyes and her significantly less hideous-looking accomplice!" Cordelia's voice became progressively louder and higher-pitched.

"Fine," Bella pouted. "She's not worth killing anyway."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

A quick journey through what felt like a three-inch black tube later, Cordelia found herself in an alley adjacent to the London street where Bella had blown a twenty-foot crater in the pavement. The police were now crawling all over the scene, but they (thankfully) hadn't roped off the place where Cordelia had dropped her shopping bags.

"Listen," she said to Bella, "I have this moisturizer, it'll do wonders for your skin." She dug through her purse and pulled out a small bottle. "I figured I should give it to you, for, you know, not killing me and whatever."

Bella rolled her eyes.

"Bloody Muggles. I should've killed you anyway."

And with a loud crack, she was gone.


End file.
